~ A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you … John 13:34

The Argument from Coherence (2)

The debate between the rationalists and empiricists concerned the rationalists’ claim that there is a class of synthetic propositions that can be known a priori. Kant agreed with the rationalists on the existence of this class, claiming that various mathematical propositions were synthetic, but could be known a priori. To the best of my knowledge, he did not put the proposition, “God exists”, in this class.

The claim, “God exists”, seems to defy categorisation. It seems to be both analytic and synthetic – and more. Aquinas rightly perceived, as seen in his arguments, that our world of experience must be dependent on something beyond it. In other words, our experience is contingent, but the Great Reality is necessary. He wanted to say that the Great Reality is God. Hume held that this was a leap too far, that the inference of the Necessary Being could not, in and of itself, tell us whether that Being is God or simply an eternal universe.

This Necessary Being sits at the conjunction of the analytic and synthetic, of the a priori and a posteriori. The reasoning that leads our minds towards the inference of this Being’s existence tells us about both the structure of our conceptual world and objective reality. In other words, thoughts concerning the Necessary Being put us in touch with reality; this line of thought crosses from the phenomenal to the noumenal.

It should be noted, however, that humans cannot grasp God in His fullness. To enter the noumenal is not to know all or to know God in perfect exactitude. In this instance, it is to know that our thoughts have connected with the Great Reality.

Without the Objective, there is nothing at all. Nothing at all. Subjective existence, alone in the void, is a contradiction. This is because the subjective is contingent; it must depend on something else, ultimately upon the Great Reality.

This reasoning is not new. Long before Locke, Leibniz, Hume, and Kant, Descartes explored the conjunction of the analytic and synthetic. He realised that our world of experience could be a lie (the Evil Genius Hypothesis). He may not have had the language of analytic and synthetic, of a priori and a posteriori (these appear to have been codified by Kant), but he was able to work through the reasoning in his own language.

He wanted to show that God existed and that we could, in essence, trust our experiences and reasoning. While subsequent philosophers have found problems in his reasoning, and in the leap from the Great Reality to a personal God (on to which Christians must add further reasoning to show that God is Yahweh), his basic instincts are correct.

The next post will continue on the journey to the Argument from Coherence.

Atheists are making the positive claim.
Neither are atheists indoctrinating children or condemning them to hell for non-belief. in your god.
Under these circumstances don’t you think that, for the sake of ethics and intellectual honesty you should at least provide evidence for your claims?

No, because as always your proposition is a lie. No Christian has the right or the power to condemn anyone to Hell. That is reserved to The Great Judge, but we are empowered to tell you what he has said will be the cause of that condemnation.

Why unfortunate? If I am right, my hope and my desired end is a fulfillment and lends meaning to having experienced what we call human life. If you are right, then my life was without meaning, purposeless, without hope or an end to live toward or look forward to. It seems to me that the Christian has hope and is therefore an optimist and you live a life of hopelessness and come to an end that can never bring a lasting satisfaction; all your satisfaction or suffering in life is merely by circumstance and without any redeeming worth.

If you require an erroneous man-made religious text and belief in a man made deity to define your life’s purpose then maybe you should get out a little more and smell the roses?
Or, failing that, seek professional medical help?

Pleasures or sufferings are only transitory to you so what difference does it make? How can you take pleasure in that which fades or is destroyed so easily? One day you are living the dream and the next you may be living in squalor. I suppose that your answer would be to hang about while things are good and kill yourself if they are not to your liking. Its not a philosophy of life that I would want to rear a child in nor is one that I would embrace for life. Life without hope and purpose is meaningless as is yours apparently.

You mean the delusion of life after death, of course?
However, this ”goal” is solely dependent on the man-made proviso of belief in your god, failure in which damns the individual to an eternity of torture in Hell. As I stated up front this is simply man- made nonsense.
Indoctrinating this unsubstantiated garbage into children is tantamount to child abuse and can cause mental problems later on in life. Based on your comments right here, you are the living embodiment of that.

So you do not believe that man has free will and can expect to be judged according to his use of free will. In your philosophy, if one can call it that, whatever one decides by their free will is without meaning or consequence . . . except one can sin for pleasures sake or kill for money, fame and power. You are the eternal pessimist but so much so that you cannot even recognize the hopelessness of your existence. It was without meaning, without consequence and no more real than a feverish dream. An ethereal existence of unreality . . . after all you came from non existence and that is where you return. Nothing has any permanent value. A valueless life.

Simply, religious people have hope and are optimistic because of their belief; atheists are not. I taste a bit of heaven every moment that God gives me life and you are living a life that is a taste of hell every minute that you live. It is always the way isn’t it? The pessimists or the folks who feel oppressed or like victims despise and hate those who don’t? Envy is what drives you to hate us. Inculturation into Christ evens the playing field and the goods of this earth are secondary to the promises of Christ and the Hope that He has bought for us with His Blood.

I answered your evidence question: try it and see. Man is made for the transcendent or man would never have done what no other animal on this earth has done; sought it out. It is what makes us different and more special than say a gnat. I like that and you probably think that the life of gnat and and a human are equivalent.

Your ”hope” is built upon unsubstantiated man made tales.
You have no evidence of your god, yet you afford it a proper noun. How quaint.
I am not in the least pessimistic and in the main live a quite fulfilling life.
I do not hate anything and certainly not some obviously insecure individual suffering from delusion because of an indoctrinated silly religious belief.
What trite nonsense!

You have never once provided a scrap of evidence in the time we have dialogued.
It would serve you well you to understand the difference between a claim and evidence.

You can’t stand hope because you have none and you’ll get your evidence once it is too late to do anything about it.

If you aren’t pessimistic I don’t know why you think a momentary experience that signifies nothing is optimistic.

As I said you hate those who are happier than atheists and have more stable marriages and happier lives; the polls bear that out.

I don’t need to provide evidence when the evidence is self-apparent to those who walk the path that Christians walk. You won’t go try to gain the evidence you make fun of because you are a too much of a coward to delve into the life of Christianity; it might make all that sinning less enticing and that would just ruin everything wouldn’t it?

Can’t stand hope?
Seriously, if you think this life is so bad why on earth do you suffer it?
You truly must be so emotional,y screwed to accept the drivel you have been indoctrinated with.
Why don’t you confront those who poisoned you mind and demand they show the evidence that you seem so unable to demonstrate for me?

The polls show exactly the opposite ifyou care to review the data from PEW for example.

It is not a case of not needing t provide evidence you have none to provide, hence all this double speak and theological dancing.
I you had any evidence there would be no need for faith, now would there?

As for the paths Christians walk …
well, they walk so many paths it is no wonder they are lost in a theological maze.
I understand Christianity well enough thank you very much.
You simply are afraid to let it try to stand on its own two legs for fear it will topple if forced to face the truth.

You have no evidence and this is fact.
And you can protest all you like, the truth simply laughs back at you.

Because Christians have hope and we are inculturated in Christ which is the reason for our hope.

How does it feel
How does it feel
To be on your own
With no direction home
A complete unknown
Like a rolling stone?

You live your life without a compass; a man in a rowboat that is tossed about by every wind and every current. You despise the fact that many people actually are heading somewhere which, since it is beyond your horizon, you say doesn’t exist. You are a rolling stone if ever there was one.

You have no evidence for this Christ character, Jesus of Nazareth.
And what do you need hope for? An after life?
Quoting Dylan, now?
Good song. I like the version Hendrix played at Monterey to be honest.

Your poetic rhetoric is somewhat childish, but mainly indicative of an indoctrinated mind.
Again …. produce evidence for your claims

Live your life as you want; at least I do care about your soul . . . that which you don’t think you have. But you, don’t want Christians to live our lives without being harassed by those poor lost souls like yourself. I find it pathetic that you waste so much time and ink to repeat yourself over and over ad infinitum. You sound a lot like Bosco in that regard. There is no acceptable outcome to be had in your efforts and I do wonder what your efforts are for? We’re fine, thank you very much. You certainly are not doing this for a beneficial reason; like your care of our eternal souls. You simply don’t like it that we have found a reason for our Hope which is Christ our Savior. So what’s it to you?

Oh, so you do this for the children? So that they can live as meaningless a life as you do? And you don’t think that is wrong? Children with no direction in life; rudderless and not bound to a moral order (which besides being part of the Christian order) is part of any social order. You prefer that there is no moral order I would suspect. That is simply solipsism or a life of narcissism. Your god is self satisfaction, period. full stop.

But without religious indoctrination they can experience a reality not tainted by superstitious rubbish.
You think Muslim children fare better?
How special do you think YOU are?
My goodness the hubris you display
Remember, Christianity is not the only religious cult children are indoctrinated into.
My morels and those of every one I know are just fine thank you very much.
However, as I have asked from the outset …. provide evidence for your claims and we can examine their supposed veracity together …

Following false gods is as bad as not having a compass in life: you end up thinking south is north.

What direction are atheist children getting: the moral free society of liberal progressives like yourself? If it wasn’t so sad to see the indoctrination of our children in perversions and into falsehoods, I would be laughing at your idiocy.

Your morals are fine. Where are your morals derived from; yourself, your narcissistic friends, teachers etc.? Atheism, if you are honest about its self-centeredness, is depraved and there is no reason to do good unless you benefit somehow in this life. Otherwise, why bother? It isn’t going to do you any good here or after you’re gone. So you have no morality. You are not going to self-sacrifice for something that does not give you a perceived good for yourself while you are living. Otherwise why do it? If other people are involved then they are going to go into oblivion as well . . . at least in your false idea of things. . . . and so what difference does it make?

You really ought to just go on welfare and eat Twinkies in your parent’s basement until your life is simply annihilated. What are ever going to gain or lose in life that has any meaning? If you win, you lose and if you lose, you lose.

You are a moral person? That’s stupid if you are an atheist as you say you are. Why would live according to some code other than what benefits your monetary life here? Are you afraid of violating a code that means nothing? It is as nothing just as your life nothing. Or is it that you are moral because those darn Christians have created a moral code that has become law and you don’t want to rot in jail? Whatever the case it is not a voluntary submission to moral law it is only pragmatic and you are a hypocrite.

Morality comes from evolution? Really? That is why men have killed, raped and stolen from each other since the dawn of man? That is man’s natural “evolutionary” moral order: might makes right.

But then surely, you might sit down and wonder a smidgeon about why men have almost universally from the dawn of human tribes, believed in the transcendent? Is that a result of evolution too? Or do you hold to the evolution of morality but not of religion?

I hold to neither. God has revealed Himself to us slowly in time as we were capable of comprehending. Christ is the way, the truth and the life. Christ is the embodiment of our morality and religion (the laws that bound us to Him). For it is Christ that we are called to emulate in this faith we call Christianity.

Your way is blindness and darkness; the Christian follows the light and his eyes are open and they are fixed upon our Lord.

QVO gave you an adequate explanation in your thread with him. No need. And you can start by telling me how man believes in transcendent beings naturally.

Are both perhaps written in the soul of Man by God? Of course you don’t really know where it comes from and therefore call it evolution and I call it Natural Law which is derived from God. And if we have a predilection of morality and of a universe created by a transcendent being (God) why won’t you extend the same argument to religion that you use for morality; i.e. evolution? As I said before you are a hypocrite. Men have a tendency to create civilizations around moral precepts just as they have a tendency to believe in something that created the universe and all the bountiful life on this planet.

Yes I lay claim to the Catholic Faith. You are also only making empty claims by laying hold of nihilism and the concept that something comes from nothing and then goes back to being nothing; and have the gall to claim that you have a morality and that this morality that you supposedly possess comes from the process of evolution. Try to give me evidence of that one won’t you? You are simply an avowed pessimist and I am very sorry for the state of you mind, heart and soul.

Read QVO’s answer to you. Though you won’t believe it or you have no argument to reply to him with I can see why you are trying this one more time.

The entire universe is your proof. Mankind is your proof. Love is your proof. Saints are your proof. Miracles are your proof. History is your proof. The spread of a religion from 12 men to 1.5 billion people is proof. The Church is your proof. A Church that still, though run by men, teaches the same truths without changing them is your proof. You couldn’t start a gentleman’s club where the rules would not change in a matter of years. You just have no eyes to see and you don’t want to see. You are willfully ignorant.

The kind of verifiable evidence you ask for requires you to go to a place that you refuse to go. So why are you so interested in something you will never find for the simple reason that you refuse to search, because you only believe that which you can control and hold in your hands. God is more than that. What don’t you get about a transcendent being? Are you expecting God to be something that you can imagine even though He did show us a glimpse of this in the Word made Flesh, Jesus Christ. But that is not enough for you. You need Him to show Himself to you personally. Maybe He will or maybe He feels that you have been given everything you need to believe. In that case there is nothing I can do for you, if Christ won’t give you all that you say you need. Personally I figure that if God does not need to show Himself personally to all the billions who have come to Him . . . then what is your problem? Sounds like willful disbelief; your free will. Good luck. I hope you find your way.

The existence of the visible universe proves the existence of God. What could be otherwise (contingent being) must have a cause. The universe could be otherwise, and so the fact that it is as it is, demands a cause. The first cause must be a necessary being, otherwise there is an infinite regress. An infinite number of actual events is not possible (though a series can tend to infinity).

Either God was forced to create, or did so freely. If He was forced, then either 1) what forced Him was integral to His make up, and so the universe could not be otherwise, in which case there was no need for God to create, but that leaves us back at square 1 and violates the obvious contingency of the universe, 2) there is something external to God that explains God’s actions, in which case God is not the first cause.

So clearly God created the universe in a free act.

There is no need to multiply Gods. Ergo, there is one God, Who freely created the cosmos.

Is God good or evil?

Evil can only exist as the privation of some good. But goodness only exists in relation to some end, and God is the end for which the universe was made. God cannot suffer from a privation in any of those qualities which makes Him God, otherwise He would cease to be God. Therefore, God is infinite in all perfections.

You either don’t understand the nature of the God whose existence I have proven, or are wilfully ignoring what I’ve said about Him.

What kind of evidence would you accept?

Miracles are evidence, but they are not persuasive to those who hold an a priori prejudice against supernatural phenomena tout court. David Hume would not recognise a miracle if it bit him in the backside.

The whole point is that the universe cannot explain itself; for there to be a nature, there must be a supernature.

The Necessary Being is a logical consequence of contingent being.

If you can’t refute my premises, the conclusion follows from them.

You are bound to acknowledge intellectual proofs, as much as you are bound to acknowledge material evidence.

You either don’t understand the nature of the God whose existence I have proven, or are wilfully ignoring what I’ve said about Him.
When you present evidence instead of vacuous claims I will consider it.

I have presented a logical proof of God’s existence. You haven’t engaged with it. You certainly have not shown that it’s vacuous, but merely asserted it. I’ve given you the courtesy of responding to what you’ve said, but you only dismiss what I have put forward without argument.

Of God, considered as a subject of natural theology, my source materials are as follows (in ascending order of importance) , 1) my own experience and reflection,
2) Aristotle, and 3) Thomas Aquinas, with a little help from C S Lewis, and G K Chesterton.

Of God, considered as a subject of supernatural theology, my source material is the Holy Bible.

Oh, and by the way, deliberately teaching children to build their worldview on the bedrock of “unyielding despair”, as Bertrand Russell put it, is child-abuse (though I recognise most casual atheists don’t see their worldview in that way – but you clearly do!). Atheism invalidates all the “primitive” presuppositions in our nature. Atheists act on their pessimism in the most self-destructive way imaginable, by in fact having far fewer children than their religious counterparts.

Just as we are supposed by Darwinism to “unlearn” the “apparent” design in the cosmos, so in full-blooded atheism we are supposed to unlearn love, hope and faith.

Church-goers live longer, and have lower rates of mental illness and suicide than atheists.

If there is no God, there is only what is useful to believe; speaking as someone who was an atheist and was raised in an atheist home, who then converted to Christianity, I can tell you that my life now is a lot happier than it was then.

The authors suggested that the remaining life expectancy might be a result of religious people being more likely to abstain from alcohol and drug use and other behaviours that could affect life expectancy – though these were not regularly recorded in obituaries.

There also may be a benefit of “stress reducing practices” such as meditation, yoga or prayer, Dr Way added.

I neither drink, nor smoke. I exercise every day and have done for years.
I am also vegetarian. Oh, and I do yoga.
See…. no god needed.
My father is much the same and he is healthy as the day is long.

By teaching a child not to pray (natural instinct), to believe that the beauty and order observable in the universe is a delusion, to believe that there is no justice in the world and that “sh*t just happens” (or worse, that it’s all pre-determined, and you can do nothing about it), to believe that there is no such thing as a moral law (again, innate instinct) – all these things amount to a heavy amount of indoctrination.

When I was a small child – without a religious upbringing – I asked my father where the leaves on the trees were made, assuming quite innocently that they must be made in a factory somewhere. Nobody taught me to think like that – I was born thinking like that.

Children are not born deserving of eternal damnation, but they are born separated from God by original sin. Original sin denies us entrance to heaven, but it is the common teaching of theologians that infants who die unbaptised enjoy a state of natural happiness, not Hell.

Original Sin is a man-made doctrine. I am surprised you are ignorant of your own religious doctrine?
I recommend you do a little more study.

Fir the record, there is no such place as Hell.
Even the biblical character Jesus of Nazareth did not teach it. After all, he was a Jew, and there is no Christian Hell in Judaism.
Why are you so ignorant of your own religious texts and doctrine?

You’re distracting from the point. This is a supernatural theology question, not a natural theology question – I answered your point, because you told a very injurious and unpleasant lie about what I teach my children, because you are ignorant of Catholicism.

All doctrine is man-made; human beings wrote the scripture under Divine tutelage, and human beings run the Church. Again, under (heavily circumscribed) Divine tutelage.

Unlike you, I am not ignorant of the Church’s doctrine.

In Catholicism, the scripture means what the Church says it means. Not what you, or I, or anyone else says it means.

Your definition of evidence is defective, and you’re not willing to admit it. All you have done, is make a demonstrably false claim that evidence means something it doesn’t. I have made a logical argument for God’s existence.

The definition of “evidence” I cited seems to cope just as well with mathematical and logical proofs, as with empirical evidence.

Your definition excludes, a priori, any possibility of logical or mathematical reasoning.

There is only evidence.
If you cannot demonstrate the veracity of your claim for your god then you have nothing but vacuous assertions that have no more validity than the Muslim claim that Mohammed flew to heaven on a winged horse or that Gabriel dictated the Koran to Mohammed.
If you cannot see your way past your own indoctrination then you have nothing to support your case.

Mohammed flying to heaven is part of Islamic supernatural theology (revelation).

God’s existence is part of natural theology.

The proof of this is that the first proof of God’s existence was worked out by Aristotle, a pagan, whose thought was adopted by both Islam and Christianity as their own.

No part of Islamic or Christian *supernatural* theology is explicitly transferable between the religions, for the simple reason that the authority of the Koran is not acknowledged by Christians, and the Bible is not acknowledged by the Muslims (they say Christians and Jews have corrupted it).

I just gave you historical evidence. Aristotle devised a logical proof, which is not written in the scripture. He worked it out, using his noodle. That’s a different exercise than proving something from scripture.

Both Islamic and Catholic theologians studied and – with some modifications and developments – adopted this proof.

The Islamic commentator on Aristotle, Avicenna, was so highly regarded by St Thomas that he afforded him the honorific title “The Commentator” – ranking him almost on a level with St Augustine in the Angelic Doctor’s esteem.

Supernatural theology isn’t worked out. You cannot prove, by reason alone, that God is One God in Three Persons. This is part of revelation = supernatural theology.

I gave you evidence that Aristotle’s proof of God’s existence (the motion argument) is distinct from the religious tradition of Divine revelation. That is a matter of historical fact; when Aristotle was writing, Islam and Catholicism did not exist. You are trying to conflate the two to distract from the argument.

Argument can be part of evidence. Logical proofs are “information”, and your definition is faulty. In fact, as far as I can see, you quoted only half of the definition as it appears here: https://qmap.pub/read/2971

The other definition given is:

1. [evidence] or argument establishing or helping to establish a fact or the truth of a statement

I have established that the two things have different pedigrees. Aristotle’s argument, which is the ultimate ancestor of the argument I set out to you, is a natural theology argument.

You are trying another silly trick, of asking me to prove the truth of everything in Scripture, when all I have actually set out to do is prove God’s existence.

Scripture is taken on trust. Either you trust Christ’s apostles, and other historical accounts of that period, and the testimony of the saints and martyrs, and the unbroken tradition of the Catholic Church, or you don’t,

There is evidence for supernatural theology, it’s just not conclusive proof.

The Gospels are evidence of Christ’s divinity.

Some people, who espoused high standards of moral virtue, inspired others by their example, and agree in their accounts, went to a horrible death (with the exception of St John) testifying the truth of what they set down in their accounts, namely, that Christ was God, and demonstrated His divinity in the working of miracles, that were beyond the power of man or Satan (according to the Rabbinical tradition then extant).

I believe these men were good men, and that they relate a true account of extraordinary events.

That is a leap of Faith – but it is not an unreasonable leap, because:

1. I know that God exists.
2. I know that God made the universe.
3. The account of Christ’s life does not offend reason or morality.
4. The testimonies agree obviously in the cardinal details (i.e. the miracles worked, and in particular the Resurrection).

Natural theology is necessary ground work. It doesn’t require faith. There are theists who do not adhere to any explicit religious tradition, as you should know.

Natural theology rumbles obvious religious impostors, including devil worshippers, polytheists, and deists. It also gives us a reason to be open to the possibility of divine revelation.

The Gospels are claims, with some motives for belief. I cannot *prove* their veracity; I can only choose, or not choose, to accept them, based on various motives of belief, and point out these motives to others.

This is how everybody works when they hear testimony of something. If a raging drunk tells me he had seen a horse with one horn, I would ignore him.

If my brother told me he had seen such a horse, I would exercise caution – but I would accompany him to the spot to test the assertion myself, as my brother is a truthful witness.

If three people of impeccable virtue and unimpeachable honesty told me independently that they had seen such a horse, I may well – depending on the circumstances – accept the occurrence happened on trust.

We do this sort of thing all the time without even noticing it. I choose an extreme example, to make the point clear.

It is obviously quite hard to provide archaeological evidence for a miracle. Testimonial evidence and circumstantial evidence is the best you are going to get, unless you are lucky enough to witness one yourself.

I refer you back to my early example of the dullard Hume.

The problem with arguments a priori against miracles, is that miracles are – for the people witnessing them – part of the empirical data. Hume’s position leads, absurdly, to denial of that data a priori, when his whole epistemology is – supposedly – based on data. Except that it’s not – it’s based on rejection of the supernatural.

It also conveniently means that all reports of miracles can be written of as fiction.

But that’s not how testimony works. If a trustworthy source tells you something, you have a choice to believe them or not.

The better corroborated, the more reckless it is to discount the testimony. The Resurrection of Christ is a well-corroborated event.

What planet do you live on? Even the Jews and the Muslims take this for granted!

The Gospels are evidence of their authors, and the authorship has been attested by the continuous tradition of the Church (and the separate traditions of schismatic and heretical bodies) since time immemorial.

If Plato wrote the Theaetetus, St Paul wrote the epistle to the Romans. Sensible people don’t doubt either proposition.

Other extant sources referring to Saul / Paul per Wikipedia:

Sources outside the New Testament that mention Paul include:

Clement of Rome’s epistle to the Corinthians (late 1st/early 2nd century);
Ignatius of Antioch’s letters To the Romans and to the Ephesians[42] (early 2nd century);
Polycarp’s letter to the Philippians (early 2nd century);

Show me an ancient text with authorship proven to your standards. You won’t be able to do it. It’s not a reasonable ask.

Much of Tacitus is deemed to be genuine.
Certainly most scholars agree to this.
No genuine historian considers the gospels are written by the names attributed to them: Mark, Matt Luke and John.
As far as I am aware even the church consider the texts anonymous.
And this is even before we get on to the subject of errors- interpolation and forgery for example.

Only by idiots. And some 19th century German scholars, which is more or less the same thing.

I was an atheist for years – it never occurred to me to attempt such an obtuse and tendentious line of argument when debating with Christians.

Plato authored his dialogues. It is perfectly reasonable to conclude that the Gospels were authored by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. These are the traditional attributions.

When the Church was deciding which books to include and which to exclude from the Canon of Scripture, provenance was a key factor.

Now you may think you know better at this distance in time, but when the canon was compiled, Christ and His apostles were no further back in time than the civil war is now.

Moreover, many other writings of early Church fathers, who were taught by and in some cases ordained by the immediate successors of the Apostles and the Apostles themselves testify to the existence of these people.

It is the most natural thing in the world that they should have written or dictated accounts of Christ’s life.

The Homeric epics represent the crystallisation of a centuries-long oral tradition, of which Homer was the ultimate exponent, which faithfully recorded – amongst other things – the Trojan war and the sack of Troy. Admittedly with a number of embellishments.

This war was was dismissed as a total fiction in modern times, until Troy was discovered and excavated in the 19th century.

Tradition is evidence. Denying this just makes you look ridiculous. It’s not conclusive by any means, but it *is* evidence.

Catholic Tradition states that the gospels were written by Matthew Mark Luke and John.
We know this tradition is a load of bollocks.
Tradition is an unsubstantiated claim unless it can be supported by evidence.

Some God-hating scholars say so, and you swallow it hook line and sinker, because it suits you.

The Catholic Church, however, is not hostile to the endeavours of legitimate scholarship as touching the sacred texts.

Authorship in its broadest sense is not a straightforward concept. If you insist on an anachronistic model of authorship, which regards texts as monolithic standalone original works (which is, admittedly, what a lot of modern works are like), then you will struggle to trace a consistent authorship in some of the NT texts.

Bits were probably actually penned by the eponymous authors; other bits were probably written down by others who heard them preach.

But it is just stupid to disregard the traditional attribution. Human beings aren’t stupid; there must be a good reason for the attribution. If a bloke called Cyril (for the sake of argument) wrote a text, is it likely to end up being called the Gospel According to Mark, unless this bloke was actually setting out to record the oral teachings of a person called Mark?

Who then authored the text? Potentially, both Cyril and Mark. That doesn’t stop it being Mark’s gospel.

Somebody wrote. The people who have curated the text and loved it for centuries tell us the names of the authors.

What motive do they have to deceive us? What profit is there in a scholarship which deconstructs texts to the point that nothing about them can be taken for granted?

The gospel authors are completely unknown and also the identity of who wrote them.

The ones responsible for the interpolations are also unknown, as are the individuals who were responsible for the pseudoepigraphic epistles of the character Saul of Tarsus/Paul.
Although it has been suggested that someone within the Marcion school /group may have been responsible for the epistles but there is no evidence of this, of course.

As so often, scholarship reveals that there are some things we cannot know at this distance in time. It is sleight of hand to portray absence of certain evidences of authorship as evidence that the traditional attributions are false.

The scholars do *not* conclude that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John did not author the Gospels that bear their names. How can they, if they don’t know who authored them?

The Church asserts they did. So if scholarship is agnostic, there is no reason (except being a god-hating atheist, and even few of them are so stupid) to reject the traditional attributions.

No, not evidence only; evidence + reason. If you give a dossier of evidence to an ape, all the ape is likely to do is defecate on it, as I have discovered through painful experience.

You should be concerned that I have cited plenty of evidence, but you have none for your position of atheism. You also have no good reasons to reject any of my evidence; though you think you do, which might be endearing, if it didn’t bode so ill for your prospects of conversion.

Evidence for God: 1) Creation, 2) the existence of human religion, 3) the existence of Pagan natural theology historically detached from any scriptural tradition, 4) the human instinct to prayer and belief in a “higher power”, 5) the Holy Scriptures, 6) the work of the Church, 7) the positive outworking of the moral tenets of religion and the effect of sanctifying grace in the lives of Christians, 8) miraculous healings attested by atheist doctors in the modern age.

A parting thought: keeping an open mind is only virtuous, if you ultimately intend to close it on something concrete.

Your scepticism seems more like a mechanism for avoiding reality and debate.

Remember – there’s only a certain number of things you can doubt, before thought becomes impossible. The strain is too much for most intellects; I hope you snap out of it, before it snaps you. Cheerio.

Oh, and by the way, even if all existing religious traditions were erroneous as to their supernatural theology (i.e. if all scriptures were lies), reason would still compel us to believe that God is One, that He exists, and that He must be worshipped, as being the author of all goods.

You’re tilting at windmills again. God’s existence is proven from His creation, but you are resolute in your refusal to engage with that argument.

The Gospels are evidence of the Jesus depicted in the Gospels. Obviously. By a similar token, the Hadith is evidence of the life of Mohammed.

I wonder – do you doubt the existence of the historical Mohammed as well? Or are you just an anti-Christian bigot?

Reasonable people accept, partly on the basis of extant evidence, and partly on the basis of authority (which at this stretch of time, sometimes amounts to the same thing), the existence of certain historical figures and events.

You’re tilting at windmills again. God’s existence is proven from His creation,

An assumption/circular argument with no evidence to support it.

The Gospels are evidence of the Jesus depicted in the Gospels.

Absolutely correct. Only you have no evidence that the character as depicted in the gospels existed.

I wonder – do you doubt the existence of the historical Mohammed as well? Or are you just an anti-Christian bigot?

I am most definitely anti-theism, but am only anti-theist on a case by case study.
I do not judge Christians per se.

Reasonable people accept, partly on the basis of extant evidence, and partly on the basis of authority (which at this stretch of time, sometimes amounts to the same thing), the existence of certain historical figures and events.

As do I. And when evidence is produced for the divine god-man character, Jesus of nazareth I will probably accept it.

What about people living in less religious cities, though? In a place like, say, Portland, Oregon, people have other outlets to meet like-minded people and find social support networks. They don’t need church for that. And wouldn’t you know it, the researchers found something very interesting in those situations:

… in less religious cities, nonreligiously affiliated people lived just as long as the religiously affiliated.

I’m surprised more people living in cities, whether religious or not, don’t top themselves, personally. Animals cooped up display signs of mental perturbation – so do human beings. But we are remarkably resilient.

Perhaps there are just proportionally more wise / balanced / happy people living in suburbia? Maybe something to do with the fact that these people tend to have more settled, family-orientated lives (3 bed semis, rather than 1 bedroom box-flats)?

A link. Yeah, give me your link. If i had the time i would bring up the verses which are plain and in black and white and cant be refuted. A link. Cant you think for yourself? I can dredge up a link that says the earth is flat.

Yes, I can think for myself. I realise it is difficult for you not to always behave like fatuous arse-hat, but you could at least make an effort.
It is an extended series of articles.
Give me a minute or two to post it …

And say unto them, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I will take the children of Israel from among the heathen, whither they be gone, and will gather them on every side, and bring them into their own land:

22 And I will make them one nation in the land upon the mountains of Israel; and one king shall be king to them all: and they shall be no more two nations, neither shall they be divided into two kingdoms any more at all:

Good sister ark, this passage says what it means. God brought back Israel in 1948. her people were scattered all over the world. I dont know how you can say this isnt so. This is just one of many. Ill look at your link.

So this guy is your fountain of knowledge eh? (;-D All he does is….say it aint so. he claims everything was written after the fact. and if he doesnt claim that he just said the passage doesnt mean what it says.I wonder what dog he has in this fight. Hes trying hard to prove there is no god and no eternal punishment. This is what you base your world view on? Dang.I can see you arent into strong academics.He like at the comic book level. Attracts the small minds with his extra weak nothings of research. Taylor made your you good sister.